Here’s documentation of a trip to Scotland taken by Athayde Tonhasca Júnior. His captions are indented and you can click on the pictures to enlarge them.

This is the spot at St. Andrews University where 24 year-old Patrick Hamilton was burned at the stake. A trip to Germany did no good for young Patrick’s health: impressed by Martin Luther, he began teaching Lutheran doctrines on his return to St. Andrews. He was arrested, found guilty of heresy and executed in 1528, thus becoming the first victim of the Scottish Reformation.

Sci-fi/horror writer Marc Laidlaw suggested the start of a fiction book would be made much more interesting by adding ‘and then the murders began’:

* In real life, ‘and then the murders began’ happened with a vengeance after Augustinian friar Martin Luther hammered his Ninety-five Theses to the doors of the Castle Church of Wittenberg in 1517 (literally or not; the actual hammering probably never happened). The Reformation unleashed bloodletting in a scale to make Genghis Khan envious. The Thirty Years War alone (1618-1648) devastated central Europe—Germany in particular—with unimaginable episodes of cruelty and suffering.

‘One sunny Sunday, the caterpillar was hatched out of a tiny egg. He was very hungry. And then the murders began.’ The Very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle;

‘Mr & Mrs Dursley, of number 4, Privet Drive, were proud to say they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. And then the murders began.’ Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, by J.K. Rowling;

‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And then the murders began.’ The Bible, by several authors;

‘It was the best of times, it was at the worst of times. And then the murders began.’ A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens;

‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. And then the murders began.’ Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell.

Statue of Alexander Selkirk (1676-1721) in Lower Largo, his birthplace. A sailor, Selkirk was marooned for four years and four months on the Más a Tierra island of the Juan Fernández archipelago, about 670 km off the coast of Chile. Selkirk’s adventure inspired Daniel Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe, first published in 1719 and one of the most popular books in history. Chile’s decision to rename Más a Tierra ‘Robinson Crusoe Island’ to boost tourism is understandable, as few people ever heard of Alexander Selkirk (who was an unpleasant and violent person, by some accounts). Selkirk’s Island, by Diana Souhami, is a good read about the man and his island:

On the road to Fort William, in the Highlands. ‘There are two seasons in Scotland: June and winter’ (Billy Connolly, Glaswegian comedian).

Stress-free shopping:

Statue of Bamse at Montrose Harbour. The St. Bernard was a mascot of the Free Norwegian Forces stationed in Scotland during the Second World War, and supposedly the leading character of many acts of heroism. The Norwegian flag must have come from the crew of the two colossal Norwegian tug/supply vessels in the background.

Remnants of Dunkeld Cathedral, built between 1260 and 1501. In the newer, undamaged building, there’s a copy of the Great She Bible. This is one of a handful of the King James bibles, printed in 1611, in which a ‘she’ (Ruth) instead of a ‘he’ (Ruth’s hubbie Boaz) goes to town (Book of Ruth). This single word discrepancy makes a copy of a Great She Bible worth over £25,000. The cathedral was seriously damaged in 1560 for the crime of popery and destroyed by fire in 1689 during the Jacobite rising – one of the many chapters of Catholic-Protestant mutual bashing. Nowadays overt Scottish Jacobitism and reactions to it are mostly restricted to Orange parades and Old Firm (Celtic vs Rangers) football matches. Exchanges of unpleasantries – and occasional missiles – and lots of policemen are fixtures during these events.

Statue of James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) in Edinburgh’s George Street. ‘Maxwell’s equations’ alone placed the scientist shoulder to shoulder with Newton and Einstein: “From a long view of the history of mankind, seen from, say, ten thousand years from now, there can be little doubt that the most significant event of the 19th century will be judged as Maxwell’s discovery of the laws of electrodynamics.” (Richard Feynman). Maxwell also worked on optics, kinetics, thermodynamics, bridge structures, theories of Saturn’s rings, and colour vision: he produced the world’s first colour photography. He could have done a bit more had he not died at the age of 48. Maxwell is one the greatest scientists ever, and an Edinburgh native to boot, but his statue was not unveiled until 2008. A monument to a dog, Greyfriars Bobby, was erected in 1873 and is far better known by tourists. 

In the middle of a field, that’s where.

Blooming in our garden.

House of D’Arcy Thompson (1860-1948) in St. Andrews. Possibly no other natural selection sceptic was so influential in the biological sciences. His On Growth and Form is an inspiring work of beauty and scholarship, revered by biologists, mathematicians and architects alike. The abridged edition, edited by John Tyler Bonner, would make an excellent gift for a discerning friend. The illustrations alone are worth the purchase:

It’s hard to beat the Mormons on the Religious Weirdness Scale; nonetheless, there are about 20,000 of them in Scotland. Tagged, tie-donning, young, clean-shaven missionary duos roam the country, apparently ineffectively: LDS numbers are going down in the UK:

Red and white flowers on this Perth cherry tree – possibly the result of grafting.

The traveling cannon – The Portuguese Cannon on Calton Hill, Edinburgh, cast in the early 15th century, was taken by the Spanish (who ruled Portugal between 1580 and 1640) to service in the Indies – Goa, Malacca and Southeast Asia – in around 1785. Somehow it was transferred to the Kingdom of Arakan (today’s Burma). According to a Burmese inscription on the barrel, the cannon was moved to Mandalay, the old capital. The British invaded Mandalay in 1885 and took the canon to Edinburgh in 1886. It survived the fate of the other five cannons that once sat on Calton Hill: they were melted down in 1940 as sources of metal during the war:

A detail from Voyages and travels to Brasil, by Johannes Nieuhoff (1618-1672), published in 1640. This is one the many rarities at Innerpeffray Library, the first public lending library in Scotland (1680). Understandably you can no longer borrow the precious books, but you are allowed to consult them. This literary gem (6 km from Crieff) deserves to be better known:

[JAC: note that the armadillo is called a “Shield hog”.]

A pleasant side of Edinburgh: the floral clock in West Prince’s Street Garden. Every coloured bit is a living plant: it takes about five weeks for two gardeners to plant and trim the specimens into shape. The clock, by the way, works accurately.

A not-so-pleasant side of Edinburgh: this is the impression of the city that thousands of visitors to this year’s Fringe, the world’s largest arts festival, will take home. The ruling Scottish National Party (SNP) has money for another independence referendum, which most Scots don’t want, and for seven overseas ’embassies’ – price tag: ~6 million pounds/year – but not enough for local councils, so their workers went on strike. Education, transport and health indicators are plummeting, deaths by alcohol and drug use are on the rise (the drug death rate in Scotland is already the highest in Europe). And yet, the SNP has been in power for 15 years. For slightly less than half of the population, the lure of independence trumps everything else:

Reader Athayde Tonhasca Júnior has a two-part photo series on Crete, an island I’ve visited twice and where I lived for a month (in the then tiny-village of Sitia) in 1972.  I have to say that Crete was fairly untouristed then—three of us rented a house in the small fishing village of Sitia for $30 total for the month—but when I went back some years later, they had built a “Club Med” type resort in Sitia, and the entire northern shore of this gorgeous island has become touristy and commercial.  The South and the mountains, however, are said to still be lovely. (The southern coast of Crete was where Joni Mitchell lived in a cave in Matala with hippies, and her song “Carey” refers to that.)

But I digress. Here’s Athayde’s photos, taken this past June, with his captions indented. Part 2 will come another day. Don’t forget to click on the photos to enlarge them.

Fig 1. Chania (Χανιά), settled by the Minoans and taken by the Byzantines, Venetians, Ottomans, and the Germans.

Fig. 2. Safe to pass? Crete was shaken by 301 earthquakes in the 30-day period leading to July 13, 2022. Most quakes are barely noticed, but a big one is always possible. Some archaeologists believe that a massive earthquake or volcanic eruption followed by a tsunami weakened the Minoan civilization, making them vulnerable to invading Mycenaeans from the mainland. The earthquake simulator in the Natural History Museum of Crete (Heraklion) gives you a scary and realistic idea of a magnitude 7 tremor – better than the one at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

Fig. 3. Shelling peas during a chinwag in Chania’s old town. At the harbour, a few blocks from here, you would be swept away by the thick, slow current of tourists drifting along stalls, bars and restaurants. That is where you could pause to buy a “Game of Thrones” t-shirt or dine on a full English breakfast or a mayonnaise-spiked Greek salad.

Fig 4. Chania is surrounded by a wall built by the Byzantine rulers as a protection against invading Arabs. But destruction came from within, so to speak. Constantinople was sacked by their brother Christians during the Fourth Crusade (1204), and the Byzantine Empire crumbled. Crete was bestowed upon the Republic of Venice, who cracked down on Orthodox Christians. The Fourth Crusade put an end to the discussions about uniting the Eastern and Western Churches, and Orthodox Christians still hold a grudge. Pope John Paul II mumbled some words of regret about the Crusade, and the “apology” was accepted by the Patriarch of Constantinople in 2004.

Fig 5. Fragment of the winged lion of St. Mark the Evangelist at the Historical Museum of Crete, Heraklion. The winged lion is the emblem of the Most Serene Republic of Venice, or La Serenissima. Venice was one of the first capitalist super powers: independent, rich, efficient and ruthless. Crete remained under Venetian rule until the Ottomans threw them out in 1669.

Fig 6. The winged lion adorning a Trenitalia locomotive in Venice.

Fig. 7. This parchment is a decree of Sultan Mahmud II renewing privileges of the Church of Crete at the appointment of Patriarch Kallinikos III, 1823 (HMC). Nowadays the words ‘Islam’ and ‘tolerance’ don’t mix well, but things were different then. On conquering Crete, the Ottomans re-established the Orthodox Church, which had been marginalised by the Venetian rulers. And there was a time when Jews in the Ottoman Empire would pay higher taxes but otherwise be left alone; in Spain or Portugal, they could be burned alive.

Fig. 8. Agios Nikolaos (St Nicholas) church in Chania. Built in 1320, turned into a mosque by invading Turks in 1645, back to a church in 1918 after the Turks were expelled in 1898. Greece and Turkey’s current dispute over the ownership of some puny islands in the Aegean Sea is just the last chapter of a long history of squabbling, with many nasty, harrowing episodes. All may have started with a celebrity scandal: lecherous Paris eloping with beautiful Helen. Paris was the Trojan king’s son (Troy is in today’s Turkey), and Helen was the wife of Menelaus, king of Sparta: no good could come out of it, as Homer reported to us.

Fig. 9. You talkin’ to me?

Fig. 10. Enosis (union) or tanatos (death). Flag displayed in the Chania home (today a museum) of Eleftherios Venizelos (1864-1936), considered the father of modern Greece. Enosis was the movement of Greek communities outside Greece to unite with the Greek state. It helped the absorption of Crete and the formation of modern Greece, but also led to terrible episodes such as the destruction of Smyrna and the Cypriot revolt, still unresolved.

Fig. 11. Maleme airfield. In 1941, the Germans invaded Crete with paratroopers and gliders. But it all went spectacularly wrong; Allied troops and civilians wiped out the elite of the German paratroopers. Then, a cockup of gargantuan proportions, which has yet to be explained: the Allied forces withdrew from the airfield, allowing the Germans to send reinforcements and occupy the whole island.

Fig. 12. Some of the graves of 4,468 German soldiers buried at the Maleme war cemetery (two bodies/grave), who were killed during the invasion and occupation of Crete (1941-1945). In an ironic historical twist, for many years the German cemetery was cared for by George Psychoundakis (1920-2006), a member of the Cretan resistance. Psychoundakis was a remarkable man: he served as a runner for the Special Operations Executive (SOE) under the supervision of Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011), a name familiar to many Britons. Psychoundakis received a rudimentary education in a village school, and was a shepherd until the outbreak of the war. He ended up translating the Iliad and Odyssey from ancient Greek into the Cretan dialect, and was honoured by the Academy of Athens.

A note from Jerry. When my significant other and I visited in 1972, we often communicate with the older locals in German, as they spoke German they learned during the German occupation. (I’m somewhat fluent in German and can make my way in restaurants and transportation in Greek, but German is easy for me.) The interesting thing is that the older Greeks would only speak German to me when they ascertained that I was American and not German. They wouldn’t speak German to Germans, for they still despised them after what the Nazis did to Crete and the Cretans during WWII.